Buddhism offers a smorgasbord of different meditation techniques we can practice to achieve everything we could possibly wish for: from developing peace, eliminating our anger, cultivating compassion, to meditations that will bring us to ultimate, ever-lasting happiness and wisdom (also known as achieving Enlightenment in Buddhism).

Below I’ve listed the most common meditation techniques that can be found across a variety of different Buddhist schools and traditions. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but hopefully it can be used as a framework to help you understand how these different meditations can be used, and may assist you in choosing which ones you might like to try and explore further.(more…)

Walking meditation is a great practice for those of us who experience pain or discomfort when doing sitting meditation. At full day retreats, it is common to interchange sitting and walking meditation so that one hour sitting meditation is followed by half an hour walking meditation. Walking meditation can increase our concentration and mindfulness especially when our mind is extremely distracted or agitated. In this video I give some simple instructions on my favorite walking meditation technique and I explain the benefits of practicing walking meditation in general.(more…)

Metta, or loving-kindness, is the feeling of universal love that wishes all beings experience happiness, both worldly and ultimate. It is a state of mind that can be developed through loving-kindness meditation, also known as ‘metta bhavana’, which means ‘to cultivate loving-kindness’. In this video I lead you through a 20-minute guided metta meditation so you can experience this extraordinary state of mind of limitless love.

This meditation can be practiced by anyone, from a religious or non-religious background. Practicing this meditation is the fastest method for developing unconditional goodwill to everyone, including our enemies. It is a very powerful antidote for eradicating negative feelings of anger and aversion.(more…)

In this video I will lead you through an easy fifteen-minute guided meditation on your breath. This meditation is ideal for beginners (and even experienced practitioners) who have trouble concentrating on their breath. When it comes to meditation, our biggest distraction is our thoughts. This breathing meditation, called Qualified Rounds of Breath, is designed to use our tendency of having thoughts to our advantage. Here, we concentrate on our breath but deliberately generate thoughts to aid our meditation. This meditation also helps us to breathe in something positive and breathe out something we really need to let go of.

This should not be seen as a replacement of the more traditional Theravada Buddhist meditation technique of simply concentrating on the breath, but merely as an alternative for when our minds are especially active or when we are in need of something a little more inspiring.

This meditation can also be used as an effective form of therapy for dealing with day-to-day problems. When something happens during our day which gives rise to feelings of anger, resentment, stress or worry, it can be difficult to put the brakes on these emotions and we can find ourselves overwhelmed and unable to enjoy the rest of the day. This practice gives us a mechanism to change our mental patterns and encourage wholesome thoughts and eliminate the emotions that are troubling us.(more…)

This is a great breathing meditation for beginners. Usually, meditating on the breath is not interesting enough to hold our attention, but this meditation makes it much easier. When we’re trying to establish one pointed concentration we need to have something to keep our busy – and often distracted – mind captivated. This calm abiding meditation technique, called Qualified Rounds of Breath, allows us a bit of creativity so we can make the breath more interesting.

When we meditate on our breath, our biggest obstacle is thinking about other thoughts. Since our thoughts are often so fascinating, especially compared to the plain and humble breath, thoughts always triumph in this battle for our attention. But this technique will help us to hold our attention on the breath much longer, as it uses our very tendency of having thoughts to its advantage. This is also an extremely therapeutic meditation technique as it allows us to breathe in something new and breathe out something we really need to let go of.(more…)

In this video I will lead you through a guided meditation on the practice of Calm Abiding meditation. In this practice we use our body as our object of meditation. We shouldn’t be in a rush to meditate on our breath. Instead, meditating on our bodies can help us gain more stability before we move onto meditating on our breath.

This meditation requires previous knowledge on how to correctly position our bodies for this meditation. You can watch my video on Correct Meditation Posture & Motivation here, and watch the video on the detailed instructions for this meditation here.

This site is to help beginners easily understand the Buddhist teachings so they can quickly experience its great benefits. I’ve been practicing Buddhism for over 10 years. I was a Buddhist nun for three years and did a total of three years solitary meditation retreats. I’m even more enthusiastic about practicing Buddhism now than I was during the “honeymoon period” when I first started learning about it and practicing it.

To start learning about Buddhism and meditation, watch some of my videos here or read my blog posts here.